G’mar tov.

As many of you know, I am a potter.

The process of making pottery is as old as Judaism itself – start with a lump of clay and make something useful out of it. Usually what I make is functional – a plate to eat off of, a jar to hold something, a mug to drink out of; occasionally, if I’m lucky, what I make turns out beautiful.

I spend a good deal of time watching a ball of clay go around in a circle on the wheel, and contemplate the two signs hanging on the wall in my studio:

The first is by Daniel Rhodes, potter and author from Alfred University – “The potter approaches the clay with just his hands. There is no intervening superstructure, no frozen or mechanized system, no network of authority between him and his work. The forms he makes are his alone.”

The second quote on my wall is from Isaiah – “But now, O Lord, Thou art our Father; we are the clay, and Thou our potter; and we all are the work of Thy hand.”

So which are we – the clay or the potter? Or both?

We at TSS are molding ourselves. A little more than a year ago, we were unformed and had only the rough outlines of a functioning congregation. We have accomplished a great deal since then. But we are definitely still a work in progress, and we are still forming and developing and have not yet reached our final shape.

We certainly are functional – we have a wonderful spiritual leader in Cantor Sussman, and I enjoy worship services more than I ever did before. We have a leadership structure and committees and religious school and adult education and social events and I am very proud of the warmth and energy and innovation that we have applied to build a congregational family together. So we are functional, but are we beautiful?

Especially at Yom Kippur, we contemplate what our next year will be like. Hopefully we will all be written in the Book of Life and, looking back a year from now, we will say that it was a successful year. Issues of the Book of Life are up to God, and we are the clay as far as those big issues are concerned.

As a congregation, however, we are the potter, and whether our Temple is beautiful or merely functional is up to us.

To make us beautiful, we need congregants, so please join. If you are already a member, ask your friends to join us.

To make us beautiful, we need money. Your dues and donations are a necessity to keep the Temple going. There is no sugar daddy or Big Brother organizational help or endowment fund or deep pockets here. It’s just us, and your money allows us to remain in existence for another year.

To make our Temple beautiful, more than anything, we need involvement – we need congregants to come to worship, to participate in activities, and come to study. This is a ground up organization. Like the potter with a lump of clay, there is no overriding authority – what we are and what we become are up to us, and us alone. We can be a bare-bones Temple that is functional for life-cycle events and otherwise sits on the shelf gathering dust. Or alternatively, we can be a vibrant, energetic congregational family that worships and studies and socializes together. In this respect, we are all the potters, and we define the outcome. I encourage you to be part of creating the Temple that YOU want.

May you have an easy fast and may you be sealed for a good year.

Shana Tova and Good Evening.

 

I stand here this evening addressing the congregation for the second year in a row and I’m both humble and grateful. I’m grateful that we have Rabbi Priesand here with us to make these High Holy Day services truly special and memorable. Thank you Rabbi. As our spiritual leader, Cantor Sussman has provided beautiful song, wise words, and steady, caring leadership for our congregation. Cantor, thank you for everything you have done for us.

 

As I prepared for this evening’s speech I ruminated on what my message should be this year. I thought back on Dave Goldner’s important words about showing up, Don Belmont’s personal journey and his insight that even with all the great trappings of a great synagogue one can feel so alone and out of place, and the story Rabbi Preisand told us Erev Rosh Hashanah about how the sneaking away of the rabbinical students left the Great Rabbi to fall from the ladder as he reached for God – striking me as perhaps the most poignant example of what togetherness means. With all of this floating about my head, what I’d like to talk about this evening is family.

 

Of the many definitions of “family” the one that I find most appropriate is “all those persons considered as descendents of a common progenitor.” As Jews, where ever we may be – from Allentown to Israel and all points in between, however different our origins and backgrounds may be, we are foremost Jews and that connects us like family.

 

When we all show up at Friday night services, or at a wedding, or Bar or Bat Mitzvah, or we make a visit to a house of mourning, we come together like family. When we visited the Jewish American museum, the Fourth Street Deli, and the Franklin Institute to see the Dead Sea Scrolls we went as a family. When we join together at Let’s Eat events, to play bingo, and to talk about the wines we drink, we do so like a family.

 

In crafting what we want Temple Shirat Shalom to be, the second sentence of our Mission Statement reads: “We strive to be a warm, caring congregation focused on our families, our friends and our community.” You’ll note that family comes first. I look out at all of you and some of you I know very well and some I would like to know better. Like our temple, Shari and I have always put people first and we consider many to be part of our family – and some of our children’s friends have taken us up on that offer, particularly those with a keen interest in what’s in our refrigerator!

 

Please do me a favor for a couple of seconds and look around the room and find four or five people that you know…it won’t be hard to do. Now, think about why you came here this evening. How many of you came not only because it’s Kol Nidre but because you were hoping to see someone you hadn’t seen in a while? How many of you came here so you could worship with those you hold dear?

 

Sounds like family, right?

 

As we begin our second year as a congregation, I’d like to suggest that this is also the beginning of our second year as one family. A family that supports one another by showing up, by working together in planning social events and activities, by discussing topics of great importance together, and by learning and praying together.

 

For those members here this evening, thank you for being part of my family…you’ve made my life richer. For those of you here that haven’t yet made the decision to join us, I simply ask you to please do so. Become part of our family here at Temple Shirat Shalom. Let the smiles of friends you see at Shabbat services lift you up. Let the smiles of the children in our religious school give you reason to smile. Listen to the Barchu and Sh’ma and let the sounds of song give you a moment of clarity – of what really matters.

 

I’d like to finish with a quote from Erma Bombeck which sums up for me what family and Temple Shirat Shalom is all about.

 

“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.”

 

Let Temple Shirat Shalom BE that common thread. Join us, and become part of our family.

 

Shana Tova.

One prayer that is most meaningful to me is the one that begins, “Birth is a beginning and Death a destination, and Life is a journey.” The prayer states that “victory lies not at some high point along the way, but in having made the journey, step by step, a sacred pilgrimage.”

Temple Shirat Shalom is a new congregation – By definition, we have all journeyed from somewhere else.

If all politics is local, religion and faith are personal. My personal religious journey began at Temple Beth Shalom in suburban Philadelphia. It was a large congregation, and I shared the bimah on my bar mitzvah day with two other boys who came of age the same week! We had a swimming pool, basketball court, state-of-the-art language lab, three rabbis (a main rabbi, an emeritus rabbi, and a back-up assistant rabbi). We had a beautiful sanctuary designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Yet, for the time I was there, I felt like a stranger in a crowd.

Compare that to TSS – without permanent walls, utilizing visiting rabbis, and with an innovative and vibrant attitude, but it feels like a family, and I have never been so content to be a part of a congregation.

So for me, it’s not the building and trappings of the Temple, it’s the people inside.

Our congregation is on its own journey – evolving and growing and imperfect, like any family or group of people. But it is a warm and welcoming and spiritual place for those who choose to be involved. We are flexible and innovative, and through TSS, you have an opportunity to transform your past caterpillars into butterflies of religious and spiritual life.

If you haven’t joined, please join. Your dues and donations allow us to develop the many projects and programs we have envisioned that we don’t yet have the resources to bring to fruition.

If you joined and are not involved, please get involved. There are lots of opportunities to be involved – come to worship services or come to our activities or at least open the email announcements to see what’s going on so you can decide if you want to participate or not.

Our congregation is on its own journey – It’s not always smooth, and we might not have it all together, but as a congregation, together we have it all. I hope you will all join the journey.

L’Shana Tovah.